The present invention relates to devices for removing planar panels, such as cards or sheets of material from a supply hopper containing a plurality of such panels and more particularly to a dispenser device for removing planar panels sequentially one at a time from a hopper containing a plurality of panels. For example, panels such as cards or sheets of material are used in the manufacture of packaging for various goods. The panels or cards of material are used to construct the container for the goods or as partitions or spacers within the container to separate the goods within the container from each other.
In a high volume manufacturing environment, it is a problem to rapidly remove such panels from a supply of panels and feed them one at a time to a workstation for assembly into a package. And, various devices have been proposed to accomplish this task.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,456,449 issued on Dec. 14, 1948 to Ruan et al. is directed to a device for removing a card from the bottom of a stack of cards and inserting the card into the fold of a folded sheet. The stack of cards is in an open bottom hopper. A wheel or stripper disc is located beneath the open end of the hopper to engage the bottom-most card in the hopper. As the disc rotates through a quarter turn it extracts a card from the hopper. A linearly moving ram contacts the trailing edge of a card from the hopper and pushes it into a fold of a folded sheet. The disc has a pinion gear which is engaged by a rack gear to rotate the disc through quarter turns.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,694,994 issued on Oct. 3, 1972 to Henry Morgan Corderoy is directed to a device for removing flat spacers from the open bottom of a magazine. The device is a feed plate which moves transversly across the bottom end of the magazine and pushes the bottom-most spacer into a set of jaws located next to the magazine.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,803,993 issued on Apr. 16, 1974 to Robert H. Graham is directed to a horizontally reciprocable table or blade which moves across the open bottom end of a hOpper to remove the bottom-most one of a panel or sheet of cardboard from the hopper.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,023,328 issued on May 17, 1977 to Calvert et al. is directed to an angled hopper having an open bottom end for holding a stack of spacers or blanks. A pair of suction cups are mounted to a moving belt. The belt reciprocates back and forth bringing the suction cups into engagement with the bottom-most one of the spacers in the hopper. As the suction cups move away from the hopper they extract a spacer from the hopper.